


6 different timelines

by Fleurwinks



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:36:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5763283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleurwinks/pseuds/Fleurwinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six different timelines.</p><p>Six different scatterings through decades where the collateral lives of Akashi and Mayuzumi could have met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	6 different timelines

**Author's Note:**

> (Despite the title, not a Community rip off - if you haven’t seen that episode go watch it right now tho because you’re missing out)
> 
> ~~~people fall in love in mysterious ways and maybe it’s all part of a plan~~~~ cheesalicious definition mayuaka loco

**1927**

The tiny class is a mix of ages, five years difference at most. Mayuzumi stares, jaded, at the cream plaster above the blackboard, even though he's not particularly bad at history - which is what they are learning now. But it's spring, and the sky looks so warm and blue out the window he thinks his brain might melt from being trapped indoors any longer.

A delicate clatter comes from under his desk. He looks down to his left foot: it is a pencil. 

He looks to the desk next to his and sees Akashi's eyes are on the pencil, too. Then they shift to his.

Akashi pitches his voice quietly. "That's mine. Could you please get it?"

Mayuzumi sighs and bends down to reach it. Unfortunately, this means sticking his head somewhat in the aisle between the desks. Unfortunately, the teacher is walking down that narrow space with her eyes on the book she is reading from. She bangs into Mayuzumi's shoulder and shrieks.

Oh dear. This means certain death. Mayuzumi closes his eyes, and slowly rises back into sitting position. It isn't the severity of the offence that matters, see, but the amount of fury the teacher self stirs. The teacher's outcry combined with her following embarrassment makes for a frazzled frenzy in which she stalks to the cane resting against her desk at the front of the room.

She looks at Mayuzumi and cocks her head to the blackboard, a beckoning command.  _Get here_. He makes to move — 

But someone speaks up.

“Miss."

(For contextual purposes: Akashi Seijuurou does not get hit.

Akashi Seijuurou is the mayor’s son and has new clothes every year instead of hand me-downs. Akashi Seijuurou rides a show quality white horse and owns the best riding gear, leather probably from Italy or Belgium. Akashi Seijuurou is not touched by any adult or child, be it for reprimands or hugs.)

Akashi has his hand in the air. 

The teacher stiffens in her high collar, blinks like a bird of prey snatched of their catch.

When she gives a slight nod for him to speak, Akashi says, “It was my fault.”

Preening her ruffled feathers, the teacher recovers, smooths the air in front of her with her hand. “Of course it wasn’t, no need to take the blame —"

“No,” Akashi cuts in. “I dropped my pencil, and if I hadn’t asked Chihiro to get it for me he never would have moved at all.” 

A high pitched  _hmmm_ comes from behind her pursed lips. Apprehension disguised as authority _._ Akashi watches her with patient glass eyes.“I do not see why,” she’s trying to get out of it, she doesn’t want to brand Akashi’s valuable skin with her mark - “you are trying to shift the attention from your classmate."

“Because it was my doing.” Mayuzumi can feel it; the teacher’s quote from the start of the year about to bubble past Akashi’s lips: “And 'I must reap what my actions warrant'."

It would be too obvious, now, to refuse him. 

The teacher shoots Mayuzumi a malicious look as if it’s his fault Akashi said anything at all.

The slim boy is led outside, a reverence never allowed for anyone else who did the crime and then has to do the time in front of the class.

Mayuzumi flinches at the four whip-like smacks.

After class - after Akashi walks back in with a silently throbbing palm, after they are dismissed and he gingerly gathers his books one handedly - Mayuzumi waits outside the door and steps in front of Akashi when he appears.

"Hey," he says. "So, what you did. I don't know why you did it, since we don't really talk, but —"

"Don't mention it." Akashi has on grey shorts, and the socks pulled up over his calves let his unblemished knees show. They have no scratches. Mayuzumi grazed his dodging a kid on a bike that morning. 

He frowns. “Look, you —"

“Are you walking home?”

Mayuzumi blinks. “I’m trying to —"

“Next door to the library, right? Because your father works there.” Akashi’s face is clear as anything and there’s no fleck of remorse.

“Step-father,” Mayuzumi says slowly. “But yes.”

“I’ll accompany you.”

Even though he so very badly wants there to be, there’s never a time in Mayuzumi’s life when he can say knowing Akashi turned out for the worse.

  

**1952**

Their TV is the latest model, a seventeen inch wide screen set with dual colour options. The channel that’s on is dull, sound moulding to the ear more fuzzily than real life. Black and white. 

Outside isn’t much better. 

It’s cold, smokily grey in the sky. The snow leaves a constant crunch of dirty frost on the street, and the boy is still there. 

He has been there for the better part of the year, lying on a stoop outside the town hall. He hasn't been kicked off, maybe because everyone feels at least a little sympathetic for this pale, homeless kid no older than fourteen. He reminds Akashi of a dog, not because of his shaggy hair, but in the way a stray avoids the dog catcher. He dodges anyone of authority or orphanages.

Akashi watches him from the car window on the way to school. Ever since winter hit, it's been hard to distinguish the boy's hair from the icy grey cement.

“The bus goes straight to the school gate,” Akashi tells his driver, every day. “I can catch it with everyone else.”

But the driver shakes his head and mutters ‘orders’.

On the way home from school, the wind rushes through the streets like blood to the head. There is no way the boy isn’t being buffeted into the cold concrete. Akashi’s eyes search him for belongings in the two seconds he can see him as they glide past in the car; something clutched in his hand, something poking out of his pocket. But he can’t see anything on him at all and then they turn the corner and he is pressed back into the slippery leather cushion.

There isn’t much you can do for the homeless, Akashi’s father says. Unemployment is the cycle they’ve slipped into, and that’s where they’ll stay. No one wants a worker who makes poor enough decisions to land himself with nothing but an upturned hat and rags.

( _Not even that_ , Akashi wants to reply to his dad.  _The boy on fifth avenue had his blanket taken_. But he doesn’t say anything because his father’s stiff upper lip doesn’t have the flexibility to flinch anymore.) 

It’s seeing all the kids two years ahead of him around town. It’s one of them pushing their friend and accidentally treading on the stoop boy’s foot. It’s knowing that they are the same age as the boy that has Akashi tearing a little frantically to the linen cupboard and shoving around for the thick flannelette. 

They haven’t had matches in their house for years, and Akashi feels like a smuggler when he places the single matchbox on the corner shop counter. They've been banned since his mother died; the lace curtains she loved so much touched a candle on the bedside table. The smoke would have killed her before she started burning, the doctors said. She was sleeping. It was nine at night. Akashi's father was on a business trip out of Kyoto and Akashi was at his grandparent’s residence. The lace produced the most ash.

Akashi leaves them while the boy is sleeping because he feels like he wouldn't accept the charity conscious. But when he puts the matchbox and blanket down, the boy stirs. He says thank you. And goodness the skin on his face is white, but his eyes are dark like charred wood.

The boy’s gone the next week without a trace. Akashi hopes he’s using the flannel. 

  

* * *

Twelve years later, when Akashi is sitting as the youngest CEO of his family's company to date, he honest to god drops his coffee when he sees a young grey haired man walk into the job applicants room.

 

**1974**

The plastic cord of the telephone springs in and out of curls over Akashi’s fingers as he waits impatiently for Tetsuya to  _pick up already._

Finally, the dial tone freezes and: “Hello?”

Note the heaved sigh before the heavy greeting.

Akashi pauses. “Is this the Mayuzumi residence?”

There’s a scoff on the other end. “Yes, and this is Chihiro.”

“Oh, sorry, I’m looking for Tetsuya, is he home?”

“Right,” comes the smooth reply. “He’s around. Who should I say is calling?”

“Akashi,” Akashi mutters. He doesn’t know why Chihiro even bothered asking because his following yell, softer, as if he has moved away from the mouthpiece, is just: “Hey, Tetsuya, PHONE.” Akashi pictures him calling down a hallway, and Tetsuya padding up or down a staircase to get to him. He hasn’t visited his house yet.

“Sorry,” Tetsuya apologises once he’s on the phone. “That was my brother. He’s not really bothered with anyone.”

“Hm,” Akashi hums.

* * *

Tetsuya invites Akashi over, which is the reason Akashi is dinging a doorbell and standing in front of a foreign front door. It is so hot that the concrete he’s standing on is like a stovetop that’s trying to fry his shoes

"Hey," Tetsuya says when he opens the door. "Come in."

It's a nice house and Akashi says so, and they go to Tetsuya's room and Tetsuya shows him a new album Akashi has been wanting to listen to before buying. The second track finishes playing just as they begin discussing how long it will take training wise for Tetsuya to be ready to join the soccer team when Chihiro sticks his head through the doorway.

"Mum's on the phone downstairs, Tetsuya. She said to meet her at the gas station because she needs to take you to get another x-ray."

Tetsuya frowns. "I don't have an appointment today."

Chihiro makes an 'I don't know' sound. "She said they want to redo it sooner rather than later or you could royally fuck up your knee."

"She said that?"

"That's what she meant. And put that soccer magazine away, you'll break your leg next time."

Tetsuya sighs and resignedly closes the magazine. "Sorry, Akashi, we'll have to hang out later. You can borrow the record, though."

He says goodbye and Akashi leaves after him, pausing to tell his brother: “I’m guessing you don't condone him playing soccer?"

Chihiro somehow conveys an eye roll without rolling his eyes. "I just don't want him to chronically hobble everywhere."

That is the first time Akashi meets Chihiro.

The next time is when he drops by the next week to return Tetsuya's record and show him some rehabilitation exercises but is met with Chihiro at the front door.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says in greeting. "Tetsuya's not home yet."

 “Another impromptu appointment?”

“Somewhat.” Tetsuya’s brother leans against the door frame like standing is too much of a bother. “That, and Mum dragged him grocery shopping to put together a first aid kit. Should I say you stopped by, or do you want to come in and wait?”

Akashi says, “I’ll wait in, thanks.” And so he pads up the stairs after Chihiro and heads into Tetsuya’s room, and it’s really no surprise Chihiro didn’t offer him something to drink like Akashi has been taught to do. He flips through Tetsuya’s forbidden magazines, looking much more provocative than they really are, sitting in a pile under his bed. Realising his friend is going to be a fair while, he lets himself absorb the noise wafting like fumes from Chihiro’s room two doors down. Like a hungry dog - how degrading (he blames the heat) - he follows the sound of the music and stands in front of Chihiro’s open door.

He is sitting at his desk with a pen in his right hand and a beer in his left. A spiral notebook lays open in front of him. Akashi bows politely. “Mayuzumi-senpai."

Chihiro wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call me that. It’s weird.”

“Okay,” Akashi says, “Chihiro.”

“Jeez,” Chihiro shudders noticeably. “Are you always so…I don’t know. Focused?”

Akashi shrugs and prevents his intention from derailing by saying, "What are you listening to?"

"My friend's mixtape. It's not bad."

It isn’t. Akashi says so.

“Nice to know you aren’t such a music snob, then.”

Akashi cocks his head. He is still in the doorway, and decides to step through it if they are going to converse further. “I don’t know why you would think that in the first place.”

“Please,” says Chihiro. “You probably have more vinyl than Tetsuya. And you dress quite strategically, colour and pattern wise.”

“Well, thanks. I think. And he doesn’t own that much."

 A pause.

Chihiro sees him eyeing the notebook he's writing in. “I have a deadline.”

"For college?"

“It’s for a magazine on manga. I have a column.” Akashi supposes that seems worthwhile. 

“That’s not going to help,” he says, gesturing the bottle.

“Eh,” says Chihiro. “It’s been a long week.” A second later, he makes Akashi take back what he thought about Chihiro’s manners, because he holds out his beer to him.

“Ah, no thanks.” Chihiro is only two years older, probably hasn’t turned eighteen just yet. "You’re not legal, either.”

"I'm closer than you are. And it’s hot today. You can’t be that uptight."

Akashi takes the bottle. It turns out Chihiro is right - the heat calls for this. As much as he’d like to protest it, Akashi has a small frame and a slim figure and is affected by the drink. He feels a bit looser and settles on Chihiro’s bed and doesn’t filter much of what he says.

“So, what. You’re just going to write drunk opinions and submit?”

“Editing, dumbass. I’ll do it tomorrow.” But he’s looking at Akashi with evaluating eyes and tilts his head amusedly, fringe falling over his gaze.

Akashi feels pleasantly buzzed in his temples and doesn’t think much of regret when he climbs onto Chihiro’s lap and kisses him on the mouth.

Chihiro’s hands feel so, so good on his hips.

* * *

It’s just a kiss on a hot day, but if there had been more time before Tetsuya got home, who knows?

(Akashi knows, because he feigns forgetfulness and goes over when he knows Tetsuya is out and he spends a fair while in Chihiro’s room, on Chihiro's bed. Akashi thinks he’s addicted to the warmth of Chihiro’s mouth against his.)

  

* * *

Chihiro can’t look at himself in the mirror without his head screaming  _creep_ , can’t look at his hands without feeling guilty pins in his stomach. Maybe he will write a piece of prose titled ‘Discomfort’. The motif will be slime.

“Akashi says to stop being weird and talk to him,” Tetsuya says a week after, from the doorway. Chihiro wonders how much Akashi told him, and thinks it’s pretty well confirmed by the way Tetsuya won’t set foot in his room.

“Okay,” Chihiro tells him. “Fine." 

"Okay," says Tetsuya, and producess Akashi out of  _thin air_ and pushes him into his room and slams the door.

"Wait —"

Because he is lying on his bed (he was trying but failing to dive into a book) he feels oddly like a patient at the psychologist’s. Akashi shifts on his feet, and still looks one hundred times less nervous than Chihiro feels. Chihiro sighs and puts pinches the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t have done… sorry, can we forget about it?"

“I was the one who started it.” Chihiro remembers how it felt when he got him off, first with his hand, then his mouth.

“So it's okay - you’re good with this,” but Akashi is already in his space, and then lying on top of him and

 - well, actions speak louder than words.

It isn’t romantic, what they do. It feels casual. But after the... less romantic  _things,_ Chihiro finds Akashi’s hand in his more often than not and, well, what do you call that?

Do you see anyone else, Akashi asks him one day. Chihiro puts down the crossword he only halfheartedly began and looks over to where Akashi is still lying, on his bed looking at the ceiling. He answers honestly, and tries not to let the relief in Akashi's exhale make him happy.

That’s about all the progress they make on their own. It takes a lot of labyrinth planning and staged excuses to leave the house when the phone rings on Tetsuya's part before they actually start dating, but once they’re in motion there’s no further manipulating required because they never really  _stop_.

 

**1980**

"Oh, look! Doesn't he look like Tetsu-kun?" Satsuki tugs on Akashi's jumper. He smiles.

"Still infatuated from middle school? Crowds of people here, and you spot that."

Satsuki’s glossed lips push into a pout. “Don’t tease, Sei-chan! I just noticed!"

Akashi peers around the swarms of highschoolers, the buzz of a new school already getting old. To him, at least. Everyone else will not shut up. But he manages to pick the guy Satsuki likened to Tetsuya - he has the same initial lack of presence, and realises he and Satsuki are trained to notice the invisible thanks to their childhood friend.

“Good eye,” he tells her. He looks away from the boy, and when he glances back again he’s gone.

Satsuki bounces on her feet and giggles, first day giddiness. “Let’s find Reo-nee.”

The corridor is so crowded Akashi can’t see the lino. He looks around for the senior's head of glossy black hair, but everyone is so tall. A 180 degree turn and he is face to face with the boy who seems like Tetsuya.

“I know you’re a hotshot freshmen and all,” he says, deprecatingly, “but you’re standing in everyone’s fucking way." 

He is  _not_  like Tetsuya, and Akashi feels his lips curl into a smirk.

 

**1999**

“Don’t you have to record everything you eat with that new agent of yours?”

“Yes, but - ooh, Murasakibaracchi, grab the cream filled buns as well - but we could  _die_  tonight. This could be  _it_. And I don’t want to waste the last day on earth eating steamed vegetables. A _gain_.”

Mayuzumi has a  _headache_.

There is this group of teenagers stocking up on junk food - for some hip doomsday party no doubt, of course they’d jump on that bandwagon - at 9AM at Parky’s convenience store. 

Mayuzumi has the morning shift.

He recognises them vaguely as the group of six who are always together at school. They probably belong to a common sports team, although the shortest one looks anything but sporty.

From where he is restocking in the pet food section, he can see rectangular glimpses of the gang through gaps in the shelves. He really  _does_  need to top up this aisle, wow.

“I read of another theory last night.”

“Yeah?” A boy with dark hair pokes the hopeful binge eater in the stomach when he tries to put pop tarts in the brimming trolley. “About the end of the world?”

“Yes. At first I thought it was nothing but a conspiracy, surely, but I am yet to fault the data.” Mayuzumi can’t see the speaker through the gap between Feline Fruit Tingles and Coleslaw for Kitties, but he can imagine the stereotypical glasses fiddle in his mind as clear as water.

“Spill.” One voice sounds curious.

“On a weblog — “

“How did you come across  _that_?”

“I received an email, I think the creator targeted the chess club. Clever stuff, they must have some coding experience for the web design. Anyway, the weblog was about an ancient calendar - Mayan - that was written by fantastic mathematicians - therefore making their timekeeping methods most reliable - and they ended their calendar in 2012, for no apparent reason. It is a prediction for man’s end."

_Oh my God_ , Mayuzumi fangirls to himself. He and his friend wrote that blog. And the emails had worked! It’s hard getting word out about a blog when the members of their computing class are the only people who have them.

"That’s revolutionary.” A quiet voice. Mayuzumi instantly likes that kid more than the rest.

“It will never catch on,” the navy haired kid dismisses. “This,” he grabs a magazine off the rack titled  _Computer Crash of the Millennium!_ , “ _this_  makes more sense."

"So they’re saying the world actually ends in twenty twelve?” says the dieter with the hair colour of straw. 

“Precisely."

“Midorimacchi, are you saying I’m fat?”

“Where did you get that from?!”

“You don’t want me to eat all this food because it’s not the end of the world!”

“It’s incorrect anyway, Ryouta, calm down.” A new voice cuts over the squabbling. It’s smooth, and entirely too sure of itself. Mayuzumi prickles.

“Ehh? How do you know, Akashicchi?”

“The Maya long-count calendar is written in cycles. 2012 is merely the end of a cycle - the finish of one calendar. It resets the next year.”

Mayuzumi clutches the canned fish tightly.

“Oh,” says the blonde kid.

“There are two sides to everything, though.” THANK YOU, Mayuzumi thinks. That kid is getting an invite to HIS doomsday party. In 2012.

“Well,” sniffs the prosecutor. “A theory as shallowly thought out as  _that_  could hardly be substantial enough to form a 'side'."

Mayuzumi drops the cat food and stomps over to the next aisle.

“Now  _hold on just one second_."

 

**2015**

It’s raining buckets. The gymnasium roof always expands the noise to thunder and Akashi’s exhale is swallowed like smoke.

The car won’t be parked any further than the school gate - luckily, since he has no umbrella. The weather forecast had been off, evidently. It’s times like these when he especially misses Midorima attending the same school as him because he would have either a) Remembered Akashi’s horoscope for the day or b) Had an umbrella as his lucky item or c) Had an umbrella on him anyway because he is sensible in always preparing for the worst. Akashi sometimes listens to the Oh Asa still. He doesn’t actively find the channel, but if that’s what the radio comes up with when his chaffeur first turns the car on he tells them not to switch it off.

Sometimes connections mean too much to stop paying attention to left over traces, remnants. There’s residue on everything. 

He's alone in the locker room, and it's freezing and the lost and found box is in the corner. Before he steps out, turns off the lights, he borrows a duffle coat to make the walk to his car less damp. 

  

* * *

The rest of his team are in their final year now. He is seventeen, and not much has changed.

Except that it has.

(It hurt in the cavity of his chest. As Kuroko hugged his team Akashi looked at him, thought  _I did that_. You wouldn’t be here without me. 

But how he was laughing, celebrating, genuinely overjoyed that his friends made it the whole way here with him, that...that was something Tetsuya had all by himself. And he’d tried his hardest to give that feeling to each of them, his old team mates, like asking them to hold a tiny baby bird in their hands and not crush it like their sporting reflexes could do.

Ryouta’s hands have always been the softest -  maybe that’s why he was so receptive.

Akashi was numbly aware of Mayuzumi standing near him. Mayuzumi never really cared much for all this, but he cared enough, more than he let on. Akashi doesn’t speak to him. How could he possibly understand?

Akashi’s hands were calloused and he was worn out but if anything were placed in his palm right then he would have crushed it as quickly as a baby’s instinctive grip.)

Mayuzumi has finished school. The team remembers him, despite Mayuzumi’s complaints about going unnoticed. I wonder how he’s doing, one of them will say, and it happens randomly but less and less over time. The last grains of sand going down a funnel. Soon there will be none.

“Do you know if he is continuing basketball?” Kuroko asks him one day on FaceTime. Momoi insisted on a video call instead of a regular call, even though she and Kuroko are in public (Maji Burger) and it got a bit starey as soon as she left to use the bathroom, leaving just Kuroko and him.

“We aren’t in correspondence anymore,” Akashi says. He thinks about the contact in his phone that he had to get off Mayuzumi for scheduling extra practises. “I doubt he would.”

“That’s a shame.”

Which part is a shame, Akashi thinks. He says, “Perhaps.”

Mayuzumi was probably better looking than your average Japanese model. Akashi knows this because Mibuchi told him so and also because Mayuzumi wore a yukata for the firework show they all went to.

Kuroko sips his milkshake.

“He went to a university in Tokyo, didn’t he?"

And then, because the weight of that thought is like water in thick hair, Akashi says, “Has Shintaro told you about the scholarship Nada offered him?” 

* * *

He’s sorry for some things.

He’s sorry for the quiet between him and his dad when he’s at home on the weekends. He’s sorry for the stains he sees between Kuroko and his old friend.

He’s sorry for the forced way Mayuzumi laughed when he told him his use was sufficient after their last game. He’s sorry for the blank lines of paper he could have filled if he hadn’t been paying attention to gameplay accuracy and perception of potential. He’s sorry the potential was limited to rubber shoes and slippery courts instead of empty pages with a person’s name as the title.

He wants to roll over in bed at night and flatten the insistent sprigs of memories growing beside him. He can’t because they are alive.

   

* * *

“I have to go home,” Mayuzumi says irritably.

“Once. That’s all I’m asking.”

Mayuzumi sets his gym bag on the floor and folds his arms. “Fine.” He gives a  _go on then_ gesture with his hand.

Akashi begins to dribble the ball and launches into the move he wanted to show Mayuzumi. Panting slightly from the finishing slam dunk, he says: “I was thinking either you or Reo could assist with the pass while Eikichi takes care of any blocks."

Mayuzumi hums. “A bit over the top.”

Akashi raises an eyebrow and Mayuzumi shrugs. He watches him differently to how Kuroko does, Akashi realises, even though the two are so comparable. Like he’s just willing to watch him spiral out of control. Kuroko would try to stop him. Mayuzumi would maybe join.

Or laugh at him.

Akashi tosses him the ball and lets him hold it for a while before saying, “What would you do instead?”

Mayuzumi doesn’t reply immediately; Akashi tilts his head. Mayuzumi subconsciously mirrors him.

“That’s not me,” he says eventually. He dribbles the ball only half-energetically. “You know that.”

“Does that make you bitter?”

Mayuzumi looks at him with distaste. “Basketball isn’t my  _passion_."  _Passion_ is said in such a way that Akashi can see quotation marks encircling it like buzzing little mosquitos. "No sport is. Nothing is, at the moment.” He looks mildly stumped to having just admitted that aloud, but carries on when Akashi doesn’t say anything. “I’m fine with having casual interests, and looking for a bigger one.”

“I’m not saying an elaborate slam dunk isn’t cool,” he says, rolling his eyes, because Akashi still hasn’t replied. “But narrowing in on the fine details so constantly with so much…intent? It kind of blocks everything else out.”

“I keep up with my studies,” Akashi says.

“But that’s exactly it,” Mayuzumi says. “What I’m saying is, I don’t see how you could possibly excel at basketball and school and have room for anything else. The casual things.”

“Temporary things,” says Akashi.

“Do you even imagine? Or just wonder? Like before you fall asleep? Or is it just a regimen.” Of course rest is part of a schedule. What an innate thing to bother mentioning.

“Short term things don’t matter."

“I reckon enjoyment should be long term.” Mayuzumi keeps his gaze, and the look in his eyes is asking for something. Expectant.

Akashi takes a breath. “I’ve never lost before. I think I’m doing okay.”

And just like that, he knows Mayuzumi is disappointed.

“Yeah, well.” He bounces the ball to Akashi. “See you tomorrow."

There is something different in the room, even as he goes through the door. And then when the second string and first string gather there the next day, it has gone.

* * *

Whenever Akashi is alone on the polished gym floor, he thinks about the footprints that have been mopped away by first years and run over the next day and then mopped over by first years and then run over again. All the games played, all the practices after school. Mopped. He could put nostalgia into Rakuzan already, and he’s still attending the school. He wonders if Mayuzumi remembers their conversations as anything with impact. Or just a bit of nuisance before catching the train home.

* * *

After a team meeting, Akashi casts a glance at the coat he’s starting to treat like a rent-a-raincoat. “Is that yours, Reo?”

“Oh, Sei-chan,” Mibuchi sighs. “ _Sei_ -chan.As if that would look good on me. It wouldn’t suit.” In other words, then, no.

“It’s because you’re so skinny,” Nebuya tells him.

“It’s because it’s Payne's grey,” Mibuchi says, wrinkling his nose. “The flatness of the colour does nothing for my skin tone.”

“Erm, your jumper you’ve got on right now is grey, isn’t it?”

“But it’s  _marled_. Eiki-chan could have told you that, simpleton.”

Okay, maybe the jacket belongs to a second stringer. Akashi continues to bring it back to the lost and found after every time he borrows it, but it reaches term break and no one has come looking for it. So after a wear on a friday evening, the last practise at school for a while, he decides to hold onto it. He is visiting Tokyo for a holiday, and his aunt on his mother’s side doesn’t mind if he dresses somewhat casually.

It already smells like his fabric softener and Akashi wonders what he is letting himself become. A slip from control could change everything.

He spends his first Wednesday in Tokyo shopping for new basketball shorts, because despite the weather being the opposite of short wearing, he does want new ones. So far he has been growing rather unfruitful. He rounds a street corner — 

(Akashi likes to think he knows most things that are about to take place. That is why he has plans thought out thoroughly on trips, discussions discussed to leave no room for misinterpretation and mistakes. But he had no idea two halves of a coincidence were about to collide head on.)

— and walks straight into someone with a clothing cushioned bump.

Once he can gauge the height, the eyes, he sees it is Mayuzumi Chihiro.

The first thing Mayuzumi says is, “Oh shit”. The second thing is, “That’s my jacket.”

Akashi feels a vague, fleeting embarrassment that he quickly smothers with rationality; if he used a jacket that came under his possession by convenience  _how_  was he to know the owner would ever find him with it, let alone miles away from home, or seek it after a year of not seeking it? Such a projection would have been irrational. He would have chided his overthinking and shrugged the jacket on anyway.

Mayuzumi’s hair is styled somewhat to the side, and he’s got a paper bag in one hand. The other hand is still on Akashi’s arm -  _his_  coat sleeve. He looks different enough for Akashi to feel like he needs more time just to look at him, to relearn the features of his face and align them comparatively to his third year self. But this is the city, and nobody has time to analyse faces of the past. Akashi moves to remove the jacket, bumping Mayuzumi's hand off his arm.

“Here.” 

“It’s cold. I’m not an asshole.”

A quiet beat.

Akashi says, “It was left, after a practice” —  practice, in the gym, at school, we went to the same school, we played basketball together — “probably, and I needed another layer once.”

Mayuzumi waves it off with his hand. “I forgot about it until the next cold day, and then I didn’t want to go back for it. It’s fine."

They just look at each other for a bit, and Akashi might nod slightly. To think, they could push past each other now, go on with their days, goodbye, good riddance, gone - Akashi’s heart beats hard against some kind of compression. 

He breathes in steadily. “Do you want to get coffee some time?”

There. There, he has done it. Mayuzumi’s eyes flicker away for a beat and Akashi remembers his face at the Winter Cup like some sort of flashback vertigo. The next inhale he takes stings with stomped cigarette butts and dry city static. 

“Or if you don’t like coffee —"

“No - I mean I like tea more, but. That’s not the point.” Mayuzumi rubs his nose with his hand, probably to warm it. Akashi wonders if it’s a habit. “My apartment is just near here. We could go now - if you’re not busy, that is.” 

Why does it feel like the last year has led up to this cold spot on the pavement?

Akashi has this feeling in his chest like a door opening that Hayama might have worded as yolo. That aside, Mayuzumi waits with eyes blinking like shy shutters of a camera lens.

“Okay.” 

**Author's Note:**

> lol that last bit was a oneshot i was going to post called the jacket but i got lazy - also i just realised it might have sounded like they were going to hook up at the apartment but they weren't, you saucy minx
> 
> thanks for reading bros


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